Everything You Need to Know About Marketing Qualified Leads [2023 updated]

In the competitive landscape of sales, it is crucial for salespeople to continually seek innovative strategies and think outside the box to drive growth and achieve their targets. Regardless of the ever-changing market conditions, the ultimate objective for any sales team is to not just meet but surpass their goals consistently.

As sales professionals, we understand the importance of exploring new avenues and venturing beyond the conventional territories of the sales department in search of sales opportunities. This quest for unconventional approaches has led us to discover a powerful concept that holds significant potential for driving sales success: Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs).

Most of the time, identifying marketing leads are their first go-to. As a sales team member, you would have a routine habit of running through the web, newspapers, TV, flyers, and other media to find out whether there are any profitable marketing opportunities out there.

However, what lies ahead isn’t always a happy ending! Good lead generation is tough. Sometimes we find a great marketing lead, whilst at other times we return figuratively empty-handed.

And this leads to frustration and ultimately, the dreaded sales burnout of your sales reps.

This gap could easily be bridged if we could filter out the right marketing leads. Identifying one is not that difficult.

But more important than the identification is to understand what is a marketing opportunity, sometimes also called a qualified sales lead.

In this blog, we will delve into the world of marketing qualified leads and explore how they can revolutionize your sales efforts. By incorporating MQLs into your sales strategy, you can identify and prioritize high-quality leads that are more likely to convert into paying customers. We will examine the key principles, benefits, and best practices associated with MQLs, providing you with practical insights to help you achieve exceptional sales results.

Join us as we unravel the untapped potential of marketing qualified leads and unlock new possibilities for your sales success.

What is an MQL (marketing qualified lead)?

According to popular definition, an MQL or a marketing qualified lead is more likely to become your customer than other leads or prospects.

When a customer visits your website, your lead intelligence unit can make out whether he is a marketing qualified lead or not, simply by observing which pieces of content he or she has consumed over a period.

Let’s expand on the MQL meaning.

Let’s say you run a website about the hospitality business. You have a hotel and you want customers, so how do you identify your qualified leads?

When a customer visits your website for the first time, your lead intelligence unit already knows your customer’s content consumption patterns such as travel-related content, deals on airline tickets, hotel reservations, etc.

By tracking and thoroughly analyzing their content consumption patterns, your marketing software can determine if there is a high chance that the visitor may become a  customer.

This visitor is a marketing qualified lead.

Let’s look up another meaning, this one is from Tableau:

According to this MQL definition, a marketing qualified lead is a prospect that has shown interest in the marketing efforts of an organization.

This high quality lead is more likely to become a customer than others who might have visited that website.

Like in the earlier example, this lead is deemed to be a qualified one because they have downloaded content that is relevant to the business, subscribed to newsletters, or have added products to their shopping cart.

It seems almost all the sales-oriented websites have a similar definition of MQL.

Take for instance the MQL meaning from Leadfuze.  ‘A marketing qualified lead (MQL) is a lead judged more likely to become a customer compared to other leads based on leads intelligence based on closed-loop analytics.

Here’s another MQL definition. According to Salesfusion, a marketing qualified lead is used for a follow-up by the sales team.

Now that we have understood the meaning of a marketing qualified lead, let’s set out to identify which one of your leads would qualify as one and which ones would not.

👉Ready to optimize your sales lead management? Uncover the top strategies in our extensive guide! 🏆

Read also: What is a Lead? Overcoming Obstacles in Sales and Marketing Alignment

Identifying a qualified marketing lead is critical to your start-up success. Some of these high quality leads will turn out to be your long-term business partners, while others may just be window-shopping your products.

Thus, it becomes important to not just estimate the right marketing qualified lead, but also have a pre-determined estimate of the business they may bring.

Not to forget: This analysis needs to come with a minimum of time and effort in employment.

Why is that?

Let us understand that with an example of a typical work setting we all find ourselves in.

Time is ticking away and you have to meet your targets. As is with most competitive ventures these days, your company too needs to grow at a fast pace or it would lag behind its competitors and get farther from the leadership position.

In this scenario, lead generation is crucial. Not only do you have to identify the right marketing qualified leads, but you have to do this exercise accurately as well.

It is no longer ok to write yards and yards of content and then hope that everyone who reads it will turn out to be your customer. MQL identification is a science, and the good news is that we are going to share some secrets on this subject here.

Before we move forward, it is vital to define your marketing qualified lead.

However, if these high quality leads are more fruitful than regular leads, why is there a need to further diversify among them?

It is important to answer this question because no two leads are the same.

Image Credit: Novsun

Even for two different organizations running within the same industry, one lead (e.g. booking hotel rooms) might be different from another (the category of rooms they want to book – may be looking at a budget room on one website, and a luxurious suite on another).

Please note that in both cases, the industry remains the same i.e. hospitality.

Another factor that you may consider while defining your marketing qualified lead is having a fix on the other criteria.

This means splicing your raw data store into several subsets like titles (Mr./Mrs), designation, gender, age, income, etc.

The clearer your demographics, the more likely are you to put a pin on your prospect and convert them with a more personalized appeal.

You can also check the buying habits of your MQL’s while evaluating their profitability.

One good way to do this is to find out how they engage with your marketing assets.

You can also compare their buying behavior with those of your established customers.

This way, you can also identify the next stages of your sales funnel.

Most MQL identification techniques rely upon the customer journey on the business’s websites.

However, to not leave any ambiguity behind, let us not ascertain MQL to the customer journey alone.

Let us identify some of the stuff that marketers look into while evaluating their marketing qualified leads.

Here are some of the accepted ways by which you can identify your marketing qualified leads.

1. Checking historical behavior

If you have a website that gets lots of visitors, some of whom turn into customers, use this data to unearth your customers’ journey.

Here, we are including all those who have bought your products or dropped out of the process for various reasons.

For instance, check what percentage of your customers dropped out after reaching the payment stage.

How many customers lingered on a particular page of your website?

Did the ‘average time spend’ metric on your website/ page register an abnormal spike from a particular country, city, or state?

These are just a few indicators that will tell you about your MQL’s.

2. Getting customer feedback

Often, visitors leave comments and feedback on the website.

While some of them may be spam, others will help you improve your site.

Some of your visitors will tell you which things need to be fixed, while others will talk about their positive experiences.

This feedback goes a long way in converting disinterested visitors into marketing qualified leads.

Because these visitors took the pain to tell you about your product, they can well be called potential customers.

In terms of identifying MQL’s, while product-targeted feedback may be more useful, one can not simply ignore content-targeted comments too.

For instance, a user commenting on how they liked your article or their take on it, would help you plan out your future content strategies as well.

3. Looking for trends

Another way to identify your MQL is to check which pages, ads, links, etc. are performing.

Some tools like Google Analytics will also tell you which IPs are clicking specific links on your website so you can approach these incipient marketing leads and send them offers.

Master the art of high-performing marketing with the perfect strategies – check out our expert guide for all the details!

4. Finding your competitive edge

Some prospects choose you over your competitors. Have you wondered why?

Do a candid analysis of yourself and identify all your positive strengths.

The key here is to be as objective as possible.

Image Credit: Salesfusion

Generally, you can identify your leads when they perform the following actions:

1. Downloading content.

If you have a ‘to-do guide’ on your site and lots of people are downloading it, this means you have a ready mass of MQL’s.

2. Filling forms.

Do you have a form on your website that you’d like your customers to fill? If someone is filling it, it means there is a qualified marketing lead.

3. Trying out product demos.

If your product is a bit complicated to use but has installed a product demo on your website, then the number of people trying it is a good indicator of your MQL mass.

4. Submitting personal details like name, e-mail address, or telephone number for newsletter subscriptions.

5. Spending a lot of time on your website also indicates an interest in your services.

6. Customers visit your site again, and again.

7. Customers click an ad on your website but don’t follow through.

8. Contacting you to request more information.

Please note that this is not a comprehensive list; there can be other indicators too that you can use to locate your qualified marketing leads.

However, you can be assured that each of the above-mentioned criteria reflects a healthy interest in your business, thus, reflecting a user’s inclination towards becoming your marketing qualified lead.

While we have already discussed that MQL’s have a high conversion rate and save a lot more time than vague targeting, the million-dollar question is:

Read also: A Beginner’s Guide to Lead Funnels: How to 2X Your Sales

Do all Marketing Qualified Leads convert into sales?

Not necessarily.

While they are, for sure, more inclined towards your products than other leads, this may not always convert.

Some of them change into sales qualified leads and it is essential here to bring out the difference between both these kinds of high quality leads.

Let’s do a quick analysis of MQL vs SQL here.

Read also: Mid-Funnel Marketing: A Succinct Guide [Definition, Strategies]

Marketing Qualified Lead v/s Sales Qualified Lead (MQL vs SQL)

Before diving into MQL vs SQL, it is important to remember that the success of any B2B cycle depends upon the proportion of marketing leads getting converted into sales.

Across marketing organizations, the biggest challenge facing marketers during lead generation is the kind of leads they are getting.

Most marketers believe that quality and not quantity marketing leads result set in business success.

According to statistics, 79% of all marketing leads fail to convert into sales.

Another data point says that 84% of all marketers would prefer high quality over quantity when it comes to marketing qualified leads.

Another challenge facing marketing and sales teams is their failure to differentiate between sales and marketing leads.

This section attempts to describe the difference between MQL vs SQL.

Read also: Lead Nurturing: A Complete Guide with Strategies

What’s an SQL (sales qualified lead)?

Image Credit: Hello Bar

Simply put, an SQL is a potential customer who has been thoroughly assessed and approved by both the sales and marketing teams of a company. They have progressed beyond the initial stage of showing interest and are now ready to purchase the company’s products or services.

An MQL (Marketing Qualified Lead) and SQL (Sales Qualified Lead) can have different interpretations across organizations, and even within the same organization, the marketing team may have its own understanding of what constitutes an SQL.

It is crucial for the marketing and sales teams to establish a shared understanding of what qualifies as a sales qualified lead. Doing so enables the sales teams to streamline their conversion process and meet their sales targets more efficiently.

Many organizations use lead scoring techniques to identify SQLs.

This way, the lead data process becomes objective and there is little room for any friction between the two departments, thanks to the lead scoring systems.

Let’s understand this clearly.

Marketing is the process by which we make a consumer aware of our products or services.

Brand campaigns are meant to tell the consumer about the quality and availability of our products or services in the current market scenario.

The sales team, on the other hand, aims to make the interested customer buy the product.

Sales are the final objective of all organizations.

Marketing and sales teams work together so all marketing campaigns are geared to drive sales but the changeover from awareness to buying happens over a period.

Many marketing teams regard website clicks as sales-qualified leads, but this is an incorrect assumption.

You may like a particular product and click its website but the deeper purpose could be to know more about it.

However, this does not take away that a user interested in the product is still a marketing-qualified lead!

Merely showing interest by clicking on a banner ad does not demonstrate buying intention.

As potential buyers, we may want to know more about the product features like dimensions, benefits, etc.

But what happens when a prospect clicks the website of a company repeatedly? Is he a potential customer?

Of course, it looks like he is interested in buying your product.

The more clicks your site records from him, the greater the chance of this person becoming your customer.

This possibility improves further when he downloads a whitepaper from your site.

Many sales-qualified leads often factor into the demographics of the website visitor.

For example, if there are repeated clicks from a 45-year-old man on a site selling insurance, you can assume that this person wants to buy your product.

In B2B settings, the designation of the visitor also plays a leading role in deciding whether he is a sales-qualified lead.

There are other factors too that indicate whether that particular lead is an SQL.

Company size, number of people employed and budget are just a few of the factors that determine how sales-friendly or sales-ready a particular lead is in a B2B setup.

Please note that the operative word above is ‘indicate’. A factor that works in one setting might not work in another. Let’s take an example.

Let’s say, your lead intelligence systems show that your website has been visited by a VP of a large manufacturing company.

You also find out that a Marketing Specialist has clicked on one of your banners.

Your lead scoring systems rank the VP 10 times more than the specialist.

So, going by the conventional wisdom, the VP is a sales qualified lead, right?

But let’s look at the history behind these designations.

Your records say that typically any junior marketing executive clicks your website and later downloads a whitepaper before buying your product.

You are now in a fix.

The obvious inference is that you need to give more importance to the Marketing Specialist, even though he doesn’t rank very high in your lead consideration set.

So, the moral of the story here is that marketing qualified and sales qualified leads need to meet on the same page, for the company to register actual gains.

Regardless to say that an SQL too can be bettered with the aid of a high-quality MQL.

Let us say, your company does a great job of getting the right MQL’s identified.

Now that you have some high-quality marketing leads in your sales funnel, how do you convert them into serious sales prospects?

The next section discusses this aspect of the sales conversion process.

Read also: Maximize Your Sales: Top 12 Lead Scoring Tools Reviewed

Many inbound marketing campaigns focus only on top-of-the-funnel prospects.

Image Credit: Textbroker

Let’s say you are publishing a travel blog and want people to sign up for your offers.

Every day, you see 1000s of visitors on your site, but that’s just the visitors’ traffic.

Days go by, and you are left wondering how many of them will finally become your customers.

At this stage, you are faced with two challenges;

• How to move your contacts further down the sales funnel?
• At the same time, you also want to get qualified sales leads. You are focusing on the high-quality stuff.

Here are some great ways by which you can convert your marketing-qualified leads into sales-qualified leads.

1. Drip Campaigns

One of the most common ways to nurture your marketing leads is through drip campaigns.

As the word suggests, this nurturing process is slow and nourishes your contact the same way as small volumes of water do to plants.

This is how it works.

• Bob visits your website and downloads a whitepaper. He wants to know everything that is happening in the industry.
• Since he has given out his email address, you reach out to him thanking him for the download. In the same e-mail, you provide a link to an e-book that is pretty generic.
• Bob probably doesn’t read your e-mail. At this stage, he is still a qualified marketing lead.
• A few days later, you send another e-mail to him gently reminding him about your last communication. Bob still doesn’t open your mail.
• Next, another communication goes to Bob, this time it has a product demo. You are requesting him to try out this demo. Note: A product that didn’t catch the attention of the user is replaced by a better version that would interest your MQL!
• Bob clicks to open the demo, and his action is recorded by your lead intelligence unit.
• Since Bob has shown interest in opening the demo, he becomes a sales-qualified lead and a hot prospect for your company.

In the next stage, you send one of your reps to Bob and try to close the sale.

The above is a simplistic version of how a drip campaign works. Most enterprises use this sales nurturing technique in various ways, for varying durations and employing various indices.

If you are new to the business of generating online sales leads, you could try out the drip campaign technique.

Image Credit: EngageBay

2. Newsletters

These can be used to communicate with your active or passive contacts so that they know what is happening at your end.

Most companies send out newsletters to their contacts but there are a few ground rules to be followed.

The first rule you must follow is to tailor-make your newsletter according to the recipient.

Let’s say, you have 100 different contacts in your e-mail list out of which 40 are at the top of your sales funnel.

Out of the rest, 20 are somewhere in the middle while the rest are at the bottom.

Besides the technicality, these leads come from all different industries, demographics, and have little in common.

So what’s your newsletter strategy going to be?

You need to write some basic, simple stuff for your top-of-the-funnel ‘customers’.

Introduce them to your company, your products, and that’s all.

For the rest, your communication needs to match their buying stages.

The bottom line is that don’t blast the same communication to all your e-mail subscribers.

Besides being wasteful, it also alienates your future customers. In this approach, you would need an active CRM with a highly personalized template plethora for you to appeal to each of your high-quality leads more personally.

EngageBay has all the emailing solutions you need – send out bulk emails to multiple email addresses without them appearing cliché, and land the lead into the sales funnel.

3. Creating event-based workflows

What happens if no downloads or email subscriptions are happening? How will you nurture a marketing-qualified lead in this scenario?

Creating event-based workflows can be one answer.

However, executing this strategy is easier said than done.

Nevertheless, let us not rule out any potential techniques. Let us understand this strategy.

Suppose you see a visitor checking out a page on your website quite often. He is not downloading any stuff, and neither is he clicking an ad.

It seems he is checking whether any additional information is available on your page that can solve his problem.

He is a marketing-qualified lead and you want to know what stops him from buying your product.

In this case, you can create a series of events i.e. send emails to his email address asking for suggestions.

Or, you can ask him specific questions about his website experience. This is called the creation of event-based workflows.

An event-based workflow draws out the latent needs of your prospect.

However, you need to be very careful while executing this strategy. Sending emails several times to the same prospect while he is visiting your website may irk him and force him to abandon it forever.

Moreover, to expect a reply from the user on the very first mail would be too much to ask for! So, the key is moderation and tactic!

4. Smart content strategy

Using smart content is a clever and dynamic strategy to convert your marketing-qualified leads into sales-qualified leads.

Every time a user at the top of your funnel executes the desired action, you can show him content appropriate for the middle of the funnel ( downloading an e-book).

If he downloads it, show him some other smart content that persuades him to arrive at the bottom of the funnel, e.g, trying out a product demo.

Using a smart content strategy is an advanced way to nurture all your marketing leads and convert them into sales leads.

But how can we determine if a marketing lead is ready for a sales pitch?

Read also: What Is Buyer Intent and How To Use It to Your Advantage?

When is a marketing-qualified lead ready for sales?

Handing an MQL to the sales team requires trust and careful planning. It is like passing the baton to your teammate in a relay race.

You’ve run fast and beaten your competitor, and now you are preparing to hand over your baton to your mate who is waiting for you a few meters away.

There are several ways of evaluating when an MQL becomes a sales-qualified lead and is sales-ready. Here are a few of them.

a) If a lead is visiting your website several times in a given period, this means he is more likely to be ready to buy than passive visitors. He finds the information provided meaningfully and consumes it repeatedly.

b) A marketing-qualified lead is sales-ready if he is filling out your form many times in a given period. This prospect is hot and ready to buy your stuff.

c) If Bob is arriving at the pricing page of your website, it means he is interested in buying your product. Whether the price point is ok for him is a different matter.

On the other hand, a lead that just visits your homepage and drops off is not your sales lead. At best, he is just another marketing-qualified lead.

Image Credit: LeadFuze

d) Find out which channel or source is giving you your leads. If yours is an enterprise that deals in software products, then there is a high probability that leads coming from software websites are hot sales leads.

Similarly, if you are running ad campaigns on different social media platforms, you could easily get customer insights into how those ads are performing.

This would help you plan your future social media campaigns.

While the above criteria tell us generally about qualified sales leads, sales and marketing teams must arrive at some kind of SLAs.

An SLA is a service-level agreement that identifies common workflows between two or more partners.

In this case, the marketing and sales teams can identify those processes which help in handing over those marketing leads to sales which ultimately become hot sales prospects.

Once you have figured out the lead handing over processes, you will also have to figure out when to hand over those leads to your sales team.

For this, you can use one of the various lead automation tools available in the market. EngageBay is an efficient online CRM that provides seamless lead management tools, click here to try!

Read also: 17 Powerful Techniques to Generate B2B Sales Leads

Summary

In sales, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQLs) show promise as potential customers, but their long-term buying decision can vary. These leads have met initial engagement criteria and are ready for further evaluation. However, not all MQLs will become SQLs, with a significant 79% failing to transition. Improving conversions is crucial.

SQLs are primed for sales conversion at the bottom of the sales funnel. Four effective strategies for converting MQLs into sales contacts are drip campaigns, newsletter-based campaigns, event-based workflows, and intelligent content delivery. Tailored approaches may be necessary for different industries.

The goal of both MQLs and SQLs is to drive sales and business growth, requiring alignment. Establishing Service Level Agreements (SLAs) between sales and marketing teams, and outlining processes and timing for lead transfer is essential. Identifying the tipping point for MQL to SQL conversion can refine sales strategies.

Successful lead generation and conversion rely on collaboration and alignment between sales and marketing teams. By prioritizing MQLs, implementing effective conversion strategies, and fostering clear communication, businesses can enhance their sales efforts and thrive in the competitive marketplace.